Calculation of Electrical Parameters of a Thin-Film Multichip Package

A bstract-The calculations of the electrical parameters of a thin-film multichip package are presented. It is shown that a commonly used 2-D device simulator, PISCES, can be employed to compute the electrical parameters of the thin-film lines up to a frequency where the skin effect is important. For trapezoidal conductor cross sections, it is shown that the maximum variations of self- and mutual (coupling) capacitances are within 10 percent of their corresponding rectangular values when the sidewall angle of the conductor is varied up to 30', and the line crosssection area is kept constant. For the case when the conductor base is kept constant, the variation in mutual capacitance is found to be within 30 percent and that for self-capacitance is found to be within 12 percent when the sidewall angle is varied up to 30". A simple R-L-C circuit is used to represent a 3-conductor lossy transmission line system, and SPICE is used to analyze the responses in the time domain. A thin-film multichip package design is briefly outlined. An HP-8510 network analyzer is employed to verify the simulation results.